2009 · Album
The Last Dance
Recorded October 30, 2003, San Francisco Jazz Festival · Cadence Jazz Records · Released: 2009 (two volumes)
Two Voices at the Edge of Time
You feel those extended runs throughout your entire body, starting in your fingers.
The Last Dance arrived six years after it was recorded, and it landed quietly—a live document from 2003 finally released in 2009 on the independent Cadence label. But those paying attention to Taylor's late work recognized it immediately as something essential. Francis Davis, writing for The Village Voice, called it one of Taylor's most totemic recorded works, and his description of the physical experience is exact: the way Taylor's runs gather momentum then stop short, like waves cresting without splashing, travels through you viscerally. This is Taylor in his eighties, still uncompromising, still generating velocity and complexity from a single instrument.
What makes this live set distinct is the partnership with Dominic Duval. Most musicians would disappear into the role of accompanist opposite Taylor's gravitational pull, but Duval refuses that invisibility. He positions himself deliberately in the bass clef, his attack so brutal that silence itself becomes audible—you can hear the piano's wood vibrating in the gaps between his notes. He shifts constantly between providing canvas and direct confrontation, never settling into servitude.
This is Taylor doing what defined his final decades: improvisation of maximum density, harmony that moves like thought, tempo that bends to phrase rather than the reverse. If you know Nefertiti the Beautiful One (1962) or the solo work, this will sound familiar in method but not in mood—it's leaner, more sparse in places, less about the accumulation of notes than the space between them. Not essential as an entry point, but for anyone tracking Taylor's arc, it's among his most vital late recordings.
Who's playing
Dominic Duvaldouble bass
Cecil Taylorpiano
Where next?
More by Cecil Taylor
All 77 albums →
